


The Wet Nurse

by blacktail_chorus



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Comfort, Gen, POV Outsider, Parents this will make you sad, mention of child death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:55:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26396008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blacktail_chorus/pseuds/blacktail_chorus
Summary: She rocked him and fed him, sang to him, held him. Swaddled him tight and soothed him to sleep. She spoke to him, laughed with him, chased him when he began to crawl and toddle. She bathed him and dressed him and kept his nails trimmed. She slept in his room, and then next to it, and her face was the first one he saw each day.
Relationships: Merlin & Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 41





	The Wet Nurse

A stern matron led Yvonne briskly through the halls, turning this way and that until she had lost her way entirely. The castle was eerily dark and empty, though the midday sun shone bright outside. Still, Yvonne kept her head down to avoid causing any offense. And so no one might notice her face.

A sudden cry broke the stillness. Flat and insistent, not unlike a raven, yet unique in all the world--a newborn. The prince. He was hungry.

As they approached, the cry increased, growing harsher and more angry. When they reached the door, Yvonne went straight in. A man sat by a cot with a pan of sop and a desperate face with huge dark circles beneath his eyes. Yvonne said nothing. She simply picked up the baby, carried him to a chair, and undid the lacing at her front.

The prince was hale, and bald as an egg. He had ten fingers clenched into fists as his face grew redder and redder. Ten toes peeked from the linen wrapped sloppily around him.

Yvonne put him to her breast at once. But the prince's wails continued--he had never suckled, after all, and in his agitation he did not know what to do. That was all right. She pressed down on her breast until milk began to well on the nipple and allowed it to dribble slowly into the prince's screaming mouth.

His cry choked off. He smacked his lips and drew a shuddery breath. As he opened his mouth again, she guided his head until he was just so, and the little boy closed his lips and soon began to suck. His eyes remained stubbornly closed.

In the new silence, a tension drained from the room. The man with the sop released a sigh and pushed his hair back with one hand.

A few minutes on, the matron came closer. Yvonne had nearly forgotten her. "Her own son passed two nights past," the matron said, addressing the man. "A fever. She has no other children, and her husband can spare her for a time."

"Good," the man replied. "Though I am sorry for your loss, madam," he amended, turning towards Yvonne.

But Yvonne didn't reply. The tiny prince had eaten his fill and fallen fast asleep.

\---

She was with him for three years after that. He needed her, so she stayed. She rocked him and fed him, sang to him, held him. Swaddled him tight and soothed him to sleep. She spoke to him, laughed with him, chased him when he began to crawl and toddle. She bathed him and dressed him and kept his nails trimmed. She slept in his room, and then next to it, and her face was the first one he saw each day.

His father they saw rather less. He called for his son once each month, and Yvonne would dress and ready the prince for inspection. The king would inquire about his progress, and Yvonne would answer while the little boy looked solemnly on.

Outside the king's chambers, though, he was an energetic child. Willful, yet loving, he would throw his breakfast on the ground in the morning and pick Yvonne flowers that afternoon. And he was never afraid, running and climbing with abandon and the ironclad certainty that Yvonne would be right there to catch him.

At first she'd meant to stay but some weeks, expecting they would find a more suitable replacement. Her husband was a lie the matron told the king; she'd gotten pregnant out of wedlock and the father had disappeared. Disowned by her family, she had begged as her belly grew large until an elderly couple had taken her in.

When her son was born, his hair was dark, and his cry brought her to tears. He was perfect, and he was hers, and everything was going to be all right.

The fever took him in his fourth month.

Whenever she watched the prince, Yvonne thought how they would have looked together, light and dark, her son a little bigger perhaps, though of course she'd never know. The prince was often alone, for no other children in the castle were of a similar age and rank. But if her son were here, oh, how they'd play together, how they'd laugh, how they'd grow.

Except, of course, if her son were here, then she herself would not be.

The prince was not her son, but he was precious to her heart. How could he be otherwise? A motherless lamb with a smile like the sun--she heard his first words, watched his first steps, and told him the stories she knew from her home. He laid in her lap as she carded his hair. And so she stayed. Of course she stayed.

She stayed until one winter night, when the prince ran to her skirts with a trembling lip. He'd bumped his head while her back had been turned, and he was shocked and confused, so she folded herself down to take him in her arms and stroke up and down his back. And in that moment something unexpected happened--the king himself pushed open the door. His original errand was forgotten as soon as he saw the scene. His lip curled and his face went puce as he shouted for Yvonne to go. She was not the prince's mother, and she would not replace her. No one would be allowed to, ever again.

\---

Yvonne had thought the outburst meant a temporary leave, but was swiftly informed that the king had issued her termination. She was given some money and a minor title for her troubles, then told in no uncertain terms that she could never see the prince again.

\---

She did, though, of course. Mostly from afar. Before everything, her family had been weavers, and so she used her money to buy a loom and set up in the lower town. Most of her work was orders by the piece, but she made some to take to the market every now and again.

He was seven when he scarpered by her stall, newly a squire and running an errand for his father's most trusted knight. Her heart leapt into her throat and she clapped a hand to her face. And then he was gone, dodging carts and legs until he disappeared and all she could hear was his laughter.

\---

He was ten when he first saw _her_. They were about to pass shoulders in the street. He glanced up, looked past her, then flicked his gaze back once again. His eyes narrowed, confused, and he opened his mouth, but shook his head once before carrying on.

\---

And so he grew, and grew, and grew. He trained and he studied and soon became a knight. The townspeople spoke of him, watching, measuring, wondering at the kind of man he might someday be.

Strong, said some. A bully, said others.

Lonely, though Yvonne, remembering her flowers.

\---

In the prince's nineteenth year, a young man came to town. Rumors swirled through the market--he was the physician's nephew, he saved the prince's life, he was the prince's new manservant, just like that! Most surprising of all, the rumors turned out to be true.

Yvonne saw him often, running here and there, half the time with a smile and the other half with a frown. He was friendly and clumsy and decidedly _not_ suited for service--so open, so forward--and yet he stayed, and then a season passed, and then a year. He didn't frequent her stall, but she watched him all the same.

Until one day when he came running up to her.

"Excuse me!" he heaved, leaning forward on his hands. "Terribly sorry, I don't mean to be rude, but do you have any handkerchiefs I might purchase in a hurry?"

"Of course," she started. "How many do you need?"

"Oh, I don't know," he said. "Four? Eight? Arthur ruined one of Morgana's and he's trying to say sorry. So, something nice, for a lady, I mean."

Yvonne smiled reflexively. "He hasn't changed, then," she murmured, casting about her stall for something suitably elegant.

"What?"

"Oh..." she froze for a moment, then resumed her search. "Oh, nothing. Here." She held up four handkerchiefs in an assortment of colors.

"No, really." Merlin had stilled, looking quizzical. She eyed him warily as the kerchiefs hung in the air. "Sorry, it's just... the way you said that. You looked... what did you mean?"

She looked back, biting her tongue. It had been so long. So many years, and hardly anyone remembered, anymore. Her family was long gone and her neighbors had always known her as the weaver woman who lived alone and kept to herself, going about her trade.

"I knew him, as a child," she said, surprising herself as well as Merlin. "Actually, I was his wet nurse."

Merlin's eyes widened in shock. "Oh!" he said. "Really! Well, yes, that makes... but I would have thought... no one's ever mentioned, and anyway, then what are you doing here?"

She surprised herself further with a grin. "His need for a nurse ended some time ago."

"Isn't it the custom, though, for a nurse to stay on with the nobility, if the natural mother is gone?"

"It can be," she said slowly, "but not in this case." She smiled again, though her lips were tight. "Handkerchiefs, Merlin? You were in a hurry?" She waved them in his face.

"Right!" He snapped to, digging in his pouch for the credit slips she could exchange with the castle's treasurer at the end of the month. "Yes! Thank you! Have a good day!"

And he was off again, running back to the castle.

\---

She had put it all out of her mind, slipping back into the rhythms of her life, until some weeks later when she was back in the market again. Merlin brightened when he saw her, abruptly detouring from his route.

"Hello!" he said. "Yvonne. Thanks for those handkerchiefs, they were just the right thing."

"I'm glad," she replied. "Do you need any more?"

"Not at the moment. But I wanted to say, I talked to Gaius, and he explained it all to me."

That took her aback. "Did he," she said, recalling the man with the sop.

"Yes. And I just wanted to say it's terrible. I'm so sorry you were treated that way."

"It's hardly your fault, my dear." She eyed him. "And it was a very long time ago. The prince doesn't even..." she trailed off, unable to finish the sentence.

"Doesn't even what?" Merlin's brow furrowed. "Doesn't even... were you about to say he doesn't even _remember you_?" he gasped, scandalized. Heads turned to look their way.

"It was a long time ago," she said firmly. "If you don't mind."

That stopped him, at last, and he backed away from her with a thunderous expression on his face. "I'm so sorry," he said again, and then he turned to go.

\---

Sat at her loom, she threw the shuttle back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. String the warp, send the weft. Everything else must fall away.

But she kept watching. Of course she watched. And more and more often she saw two together, one light and one dark.

\---

A young boy went before her, trotting along the corridors with unselfconscious ease. She'd been summoned, he told her. By the prince.

The evening was coming on and candles flickered in their sconces. They sailed past the great hall and the smaller rooms for public audiences and continued along the ways her feet still knew so well. Soon, they were at a door. The page boy knocked, and Merlin opened it.

"The Lady Yvonne," the boy piped solemnly. Merlin smiled and slipped him a sweet.

"Come," said a voice from within.

Yvonne entered the room. An oak desk had replaced the low nursery table, and the man who sat behind it was tall and broad and fair. Candlelight played across his yellow hair as his head bent over a parchment, and a quill turned in his hand. He put the writing down and looked swiftly up. A strong brow and a proud nose framed his brilliant eyes, as clear and as blue as she remembered.

"Your highness," she said, and curtsied.

He stood, and she felt his gaze searching though she kept her own eyes down.

"My lady," he greeted her. "Merlin tells me you're to be thanked for replacing the Lady Morgana's kerchiefs."

"Yes, sire."

"He has told me many other things as well," the prince went on. Merlin stood in the corner, puttering away at something in the wardrobe. "He's a lover of the classics, it seems. Old stories. The she-wolf saving Romulus and Remus. Lanike and Alexander of Macedon."

The names meant nothing to her. "Yes, sire?"

"And you are Yvonne," he continued. He swallowed audibly and shifted his weight. "But I... I called you Evie."

Her hand flew to her mouth as a lump rose suddenly in her throat. She couldn't stifle her small gasp or keep her eyes from snapping up, seeking his in the dimming light. They shone, brighter now than when he had begun.

"You did," she breathed. "And I called you--"

"Dearheart," he finished.

Her tears erupted all at once. She moved to hide her face again, but Merlin appeared with a small, comforting noise. He led her to a nearby seat and offered her a napkin.

"My apologies--it's not as fine as yours," he remarked, flashing her a quick smile.

"Good thing I have my own, then," Yvonne sniffed, drawing one from her sleeve. She pressed it to her face but it was soon soaked through. Her cheeks burned, but she couldn't stop.

A hand on her shoulder coaxed her to look up. It was the prince, crouched before her, his fringe messy on his forehead. It was her little boy, bringing her a flower at the end of his play. Of course she opened her arms, and he reached up for them. She kissed his hair and breathed.

"My dearheart," she murmured. "My Arthur."

Merlin left them there, together, slipping out the door into the gathering night.


End file.
